Daqamseh’s Mother and Defeated Heroes

Moroccan writer and intellectual, Al-Saleh Bu-Walid, gives reason to hope that sanity may one day come to reign in our unstable and hate-filled part of the world in spite of the likes of Daqamseh’s mother. He was participating in a studio discussion on  a TV programme hosted by Al Jazeera in July 2011, entitled “The Intifada and the Fate of the Arab Regimes”. MEMRI summarized the programme in English. Dr. Faysel Al-Qasem hosted the discussion with guests Bu-Walid and Tunisian Islamic Fundamentalist, Sheik Rashed Al-Ghanushi.

Ahmed Daqamseh’s mother in screenshot from AP youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgVxLrqIO_0

After some some time, the telephone lines were opened for call-ins. Among the callers was the mother of Ahmad Daqamseh, murderer of seven 13-year-old Israeli girls. What she said has been widely quoted whenever discussing Daqamseh.

I am proud of my son, and I hold my head high. My son did a heroic deed and has pleased Allah and his own conscience. My son lifts my head and the head of the entire Arab and Islamic nation. I am proud of any Muslim who does what Ahmad did. I hope that I am not saying something wrong. When my son went to prison, they asked him: ‘Ahmad, do you regret it?’ He answered: ‘I have no regrets.’ He treated everyone to coffee, honored all the other prisoners, and said: ‘The only thing that I am angry about is the gun, which did not work properly. Otherwise I would have killed all of the passengers on the bus.’

This was followed by a discussion between Al-Qasem, and Bu-Walid. Bu-Walid’s response was truly unique [emphasis added]:

I have a comment about the remarks of Ahmad Daqamseh’s mother. We should have called this show ‘defeated heroes of a defeated people.’ With all due respect for the suffering of his mother, Ahmad Daqamseh is a criminal who murdered seven girls in cold blood – seven flowers at the dawn of their lives. He is a criminal, and his mother should not have presented him as a model for Arab youth.

Al-Qasem raised the issue of Israeli terrorists, repeating the vicious lie that Israel memorializes and adores the memory of Baruch Goldstein. Bu-Walid concludes with:

They are all criminals, brother. But we must act like cultured people, we must forget about revenge, we must live in the modern age.

Unfortunately, other callers labelled Bu-Walid an illiterate, scum, enemy of our nation and a coward. One ranted:

… this secular man, who might even be Jewish, should get off the television screen. Where do people like him come from?! On what street do you find them? In the name of Allah, he increases my blood- pressure!

Bu-Walid was a lone voice in the din of hatred.

Al-Ghanushi had opened the studio discussion with praise to the mothers of the suicide bombers:

I would like to send my blessings to the mothers of those youth, those men who succeeded in creating a new balance of power… I bless the mothers who planted in the blessed land of Palestine the amazing seeds of these youths, who taught the international system and the Israeli arrogance, supported by the US, an important lesson. The Palestinian woman, mother of the Shahids [martyrs], is a martyr herself, and she has created a new model of woman.

Is this part of a campaign brainwashing mothers to groom their kids to be terrorists? After all, promoting suicide in their own children seems to go against all natural motherly instincts and must require some powerful mind control to achieve.

Sheik Ghanushi suggested that the Arab world NEEDS to keep the Palestinian issue alive in order to maintain unity:

…the Intifada has returned a degree of consensus to the Arab and Islamic regimes and joined between the rulers and the people and between the Islamic movements on the one hand, and the Pan-Arab nationalist movements, on the other hand.

All callers came down hard on the idea of giving up the fight against the Zionist enemy; for example:

… the Palestinian issue is not an Arab issue, but an Islamic one.

It is an honor for me to sow terror in the hearts of the enemies of Allah.

And finally, PA Minister of Supplies, Abu Ali Shahin, called in to say:

… accepting the Oslo accords was for the Palestinians, a betrayal of the historical legitimacy of the Arab right to Palestine. However, … Oslo becomes legitimate when one takes into consideration that it was done in order to gain a better position and to continue in the liberation of the land.

This last statement can give us either hope or cause for apprehension depending on how we choose to interpret it. On the one hand, it seems to clearly state that the Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians will never countenance a Jewish state in the Middle East. On the other hand, perhaps Oslo can be for the Arabs what the the 40-year sojourn in the desert was for the Israelites: enough time for the Egyptian-slave mentality to be replaced in the new generations by a freedom mentality.  If (and this is a big if) the remaining steps of the Oslo Accords are carried out, and the new generation of Arabs living in the Palestinian Authority are taught co-existence rather than replacement of the Jews, then there may actually be hope of a stable and dependable agreement between us.

I am not holding my breath.

And that is because, in spite of people like Bu-Walid, there are far too many like Ahmad Daqamseh’s mother who praise defeated so-called “heroes”.

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